


who we are without each other (it's just too hard)

by I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own



Series: Suilad Aran Thranduil [51]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: I've been meaning to write about them, No Beta we die like Oropher, Thranduil and Galion are adopted siblings, Thranduil and Galion are platonic life partners, and I've be reliably informed it is 'ouch', and oh my god, for awhile!, like I have a massive project ongoing for them, that carries from Doriath all the way to the War of the Ring, this is bittersweet..., you can pry these two from my cold dead hands!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:47:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own/pseuds/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own
Summary: One would have thought Galion would have gotten used to the idea of losing his brother by now.One would be wrong.
Relationships: Galion & Thranduil (Tolkien)
Series: Suilad Aran Thranduil [51]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/65456
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	who we are without each other (it's just too hard)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Other Side by Ruelle, which spawned this entire fic!!

_“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?” ~Jodi Piccoult_

Galion has seemingly endless experience with the choking terror and heart-wrenching grief that comes from believing Thranduil is dead. The cloying guilt that he’s survived and Thranduil hasn’t when of the two of them, Thranduil is the one that needs to live. The aching awareness that while he will grow and change and become a different Galion than he is at that moment, Thranduil won’t be there to see it, won’t be there to grow and change and become different with him. The niggling fear that when they meet again in Aman, they won’t know each other, because Thranduil will have stayed as he died or grown in ways Galion can’t recognize after being rebodied, and Galion will have done the same.

The first time it happens is Sirion. They’d been on opposite sides of the Haven when the fighting had started, and it hadn’t been until a week later that they reunited on Balar. His adoptive father, Oropher, had sought him out on the shore where he’d been kicking at the sand and cursing Eru and the Valar and all the elves who let the Noldor leave Aman in the first place. His father had sat down on the sand and watched him, his presence a comfort as equally as it was not. Oropher was Thranduil’s father first, after all, just another reason Thranduil should have survived in Galion’s place.

His father had waited until he’d deflated, all the rage finally leaving him, it would come back, he knew, but for now, it was gone, his reserves spent. He’d felt like as the anger fled so did his physical strength, and he’d fallen to his knees in the sand. His father had sighed, no judgment, no disappointment in the sound, just sadness, and understanding. Galion had finally bothered to look up at him and frowned at the fledgling little smile on his father’s face.

“Ada?” Galion had asked, his voice scratchy from his ranting, from his screaming at an ocean that would never give him the answers he sought, not even if Ulmo were to rise up from the water himself.

“A new group of refugees has arrived.” His father answered, looking away from him and down into the sand that he was letting run through his fingers. “They were slowed down by all the injured.” Galion had sucked in a breath, the hope so, so painful and tasting so, so much like terror.

“Ada?”

“Thranduil is with them.” Those four words had shattered Galion’s world for the second time in a week, even if he hadn’t believed them until he’d seen his brother for himself. White-blond hair stained red with blood and the familiar face scattered with bruises and cuts but looking so relaxed in sleep. Suddenly, Galion hadn’t felt like he didn’t deserve to still be breathing.

The next time it had happened after that, was during one of their ventures beyond Greenwood, where they got to be anyone other than Prince Thranduil and Prince Galion of Greenwood. There’d been a bandit raid on the little human town they’d been staying in, and somewhere in the fighting, Galion had been swept one way and Thranduil another. It had honestly been a miracle when he’d managed to find Feren in all the fighting. They hadn’t been able to find Thranduil. Not during the battle and not in its aftermath and not the day after, either. He’d struggled to breathe, to think the entire time. Terrified all over again that this was it, Thranduil was gone and he survived alone.

Two days after the battle, the rubble for one of the destroyed buildings had been cleared away, he’d heard shouting and hurried towards it. That’s when he saw the familiar white-gold hair, once again matted with blood and dust and ash, that beautiful face dotted with bruising. Thranduil and Elluin had been inside the building when it had collapsed, a partially fallen beam had protected them from the brunt of the collapse, but it would take a miracle to leave a building collapse without a scratch.

The Last Alliance had been riddled with such encounters, even before their father had died, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the moment he stumbled across his father’s body, broken and lifeless on the battlefield. Of course, it had only been compounded when no one could find Thranduil once the dust had settled.

No one had been able to find his brother, his king and he’d been doubly terrified, not just that Thranduil was gone, but that he’d have to step up and be a king when he’d never wanted it. Thranduil had never wanted it either, but if the worst had happened, they’d sworn they’d do it together, one of them would carry the title, but they’d share the responsibilities, but there he had been. Covered in blood and gore and standing over the body of his father with a brother that no one could locate. He’d thought at the time, that his heart might have burst, the pain had been so intense.

Then Thranduil had come stumbling out of the mist, barely recognizable with half his hair gone, and a large gash across his cheek that had bled all over his face and had just barely missed taking an eye or a chunk of his nose. Galion hadn’t cared who saw them embracing. Hadn’t cared who saw them crying over the loss of their father. Galion hadn’t even cared that the pair of them had gone quite feral in the aftermath of their father’s loss and that such was probably the reason that even today the elves of Greenwood were more dangerous and less wise, more savage, more feral, less open, less welcoming.

Now, in the aftermath of what will be called the Battle of Five Armies, Galion feels that terror again. The chill that has wrapped itself around his heart and refuses to let go. The lump in his throat that he just can’t swallow down. The tears that won’t stop burning in his eyes but won’t fall, either. He wonders if everyone can see how close he is to shaking himself apart. Can see how easy it would be for him to just fall to the ground and never rise up again.

The only consolation he has is that the dwarves are in the same boat. Their King and his princes missing somewhere on the battlefield, no one sure if they survived, but certain they were together, wherever they were. At least Galion knew that his nephew and his sons were alive. He’d seen Eluréd and Elurín shouting orders in the healing tents, and he’d found a traumatized Legolas sitting on one of the ruined walls of Dale, the once vibrant emerald eyes, so like his father’s, dimmed and clouded with shock and confusion and anguish.

Normally, Galion would have known how to comfort him, how to draw him out, but Galion can’t even remember how to breathe himself, and he’s sure if he opens his mouth to talk of Thranduil all that will come out are pleas and curses and- he hasn’t come far at all from that angry elf screaming at the waves in lieu of being able to scream at their uncaring Maker and his equally uncaring children. If he goes screaming at the sky now, it’ll have as few answers for him as the sea did, even if Manwë deigned to show his face.

He thinks it would probably help him feel better, though. It’s the only thing he’s ever found that helps whenever he’s forced to consider the very likely chance that he has become an only child. So far, Thranduil has always come back, has proved his fear unnecessary, but there’s always a first time for everything. Galion knows himself too well, he knows he doesn’t have it in him to be one of those people who lives in a dream world, refusing to accept the harsh, painful, and unwanted reality that the person they loved the most is gone.

Loved. As if the love just perishes along with the person. If only it were that easy, if only attachment ended at death, the way humans seem to pretend like it does. ‘Unto death do us part’, but death doesn’t stop his heart from wanting. His father has been dead for nearly three thousand years, but he still searches for him. His Uncle Thingol has been gone for even longer, and he still makes mental reminders to tell him about things Galion knows would interest him.

Death isn’t permanent for elves. It’s a blip, a pause before they continue on with the life that was briefly severed from them. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an ending. Galion doesn’t want to know who he becomes without Thranduil, just as he doesn’t want to know who Thranduil becomes without him. He supposes that’s what it means by ‘loved’.

The person you loved most is gone. If Thranduil is dead, then the Thranduil Galion eventually meets again in Aman will not be _his_ Thranduil and he doesn’t know if he’d ever become his Thranduil again, because there would be too much changed, too much time stretched between them that they didn’t share, and they’d constantly be searching for the elves they were when they were last together. The Thranduil and Galion that died the same moment Thranduil did. 

His cousin once took herself off to the Halls of Waiting and convinced their Maker to give back her lover. Galion isn’t sure he’d ever be able to do what Lúthien did, Thranduil could, almost did when his wife was taken. But Galion isn’t sure he could do it. If he was in Aman, he’d sit outside the doors and scream and beg and cry for Námo to give his brother back. But he’s not sure he could leave his body behind without dying in truth, but perhaps that’s better than waiting to sail to Aman. Let himself fade away, so the time they were separated wouldn’t stretch long into the future.

“Galion?”

Air rushes into his lungs, his heart expands, his eyes water, and he finds he can finally breathe, can finally think of something that isn’t the crushing, aching grief and loneliness. That horrible, no good, cloying fear receding until it’s needed once again, as Galion knows it will be.

“Thranduil.” He whispers, barely able to make his tongue move, make his voice heard as he’s tugged against a familiar chest and held tight. His arms feel stiff even as he brings them up to wrap around his brother.

“I’m here. I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m here.”

Galion wants to scream at him to never scare him like this again, but he already knows from experience that that’s not something either of them can control. So, he just clings tight to his brother and revels in the fact he still has a brother to hold.

**Author's Note:**

> Thran and Galion found Elured and Elurin on their way out of Doriath, and they raised the boys together... (this is my fave headcanon and I will never let it go)


End file.
